Monday, April 15, 2013

How to Install Mac OS X on a PC and Notebooks

How to Install Mac OS X on a PC and Notebooks

Great progress has been made in hacking PCs to run OS X, and it is now possible to install Mac OS X without a Mac.
Thanks to some great tools put together by some brilliant hackers, it
is also much easier and does not involve nearly as much time and effort
as was once required.

Step 1: Getting The Hardware Ready

I recently purchased
the following set of hardware for the purposes of building a Hackintosh
(often PCs running Mac OS X are referred to as such):

The motherboard has
an 8-pin power connector on it, and although it is possible to connect a
single 4-pin connector to it, you may encounter odd issues running with
just a single 4-pin connector. To ensure that you provide sufficient
power to the board, you should purchase the 4-pin to 8-pin power
adapter. Alternatively, you could purchase a power supply with 3x 4-pin
connectors (1 for the 20+4-pin main connector, and 2 for the 8-pin
connection) or an 8-pin connector.

All-in-all, the full system (without monitor) will run you around $600 (you could also add a 22″ monitor for $170).
You could certainly try doing it even cheaper with different hardware,
but you’ll need to figure out the appropriate changes to make in the
BIOS and boot loader installation.

I did my best to put
together a fairly modern system for a very reasonable price. Having used
this set of hardware, I can affirm that it runs OS X Snow Leopard very
well. Without a doubt, $600 – $800 is a far cry from what you would
spend on an equivalent Mac from Apple. Granted it won’t be as compact or
pretty as an iMac, but it will be just as functional.

Step 2: Putting The Hardware Together

If you purchase the
hardware I used, along with a hard drive and NVIDIA GeForce video card,
you should be able to follow the instructions exactly as I’ve laid them
out. If you’ve never built a PC before but are willing to give it a try,
you’ll definitely want to check out The Idiot’s Ultimate Guide to Build
Your Own PC. It is a step-by-step guide to building your own PC, with
plenty of photos to help you out.

You can try following
this tutorial with existing hardware you have as well, although you may
need to make adjustments when configuring the BIOS and installing the
boot loader. The more modern your hardware is, the better the chances
are it will work for you. It would be best if you have a 64-bit Intel
dual-core (or quad-core) processor, although an older CPU might still
work as well. I would recommend NVIDIA GeForce video card, but ATI cards
should work too.

Step 3: Prepare The Boot Disk

In addition to the
hardware and a retail copy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, you’ll also need a
blank CD. You may want to use a rewritable CD if you’re using a
different hardware configuration, just in case the first one I recommend
doesn’t work for you. There are two boot disk images that will allow
you to install OS X directly from the installation DVD:

I successfully used
both of them with my hardware setup. However I recommend you try iBoot
first, as it is a bit leaner and doesn’t take as long to boot. If you’re
using my hardware configuration, be sure to download theiBoot Supported disk image. If you use Empire EFI, download the Empire EFI v1.085 R2 image.

You can use one of
many free programs to burn CDs if you don’t have one. Be sure to use the
disk image burning mode in your CD burning software. Do not just simply
copy the disk image file to a blank CD. I likeInfraRecorder, because it makes this very easy. All you have to do is click the Write Image button,
select the image, and burn it. Once again, you may wish to use
rewritable media if you’re using a different hardware configuration .

Step 4: Bios Configuration

Fortunately, the
Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 does not require a lot of configuration to run Mac
OS X. When you first turn on or reboot the machine, press the delete key
to enter the BIOS setup. You can just load the Optimized Defaults, and
just make a few changes within three sections of the bios: Advanced BIOS
Features, Integrated Peripherals, and Power Management Setup.

4.1 – First, go to Advanced BIOS Features and set the First Boot Device to CDROM. I have my USB drive as the second drive and then Hard Disk as third – you can configure yours the same way if you wish to ever boot from a USB drive. Just be sure that Hard Disk is the Second Boot Device or Third Boot Device.

4.2 – Next, configure SATA to run in AHCI mode in the Integrated Peripherals menu. You’ll need to set bothPCH SATA Control Mode and Onboard SATA/IDE Ctrl Mode to AHCI.

4.3 – Finally, go to Power Management Setup and set the HPET Mode to 64-bit mode.

Step 5: Installing Mac OS X

5.4 – When you see the screen below, select Mac OS X Install DVD (it should already be selected) and pressEnter.

5.5 – If all
goes well, you should eventually see the language selection screen for
the installer. If all did not go well and you do not make it to the
language selection screen, try downloading a different version of iBoot orEmpire EFI.

5.10 – Select 1 Partition for the partition scheme. Note: If
you have a drive that is larger than 2 TB, do not create partitions
larger than 1 TB. Split the drive into multiple partitions, and be sure
the main installation partition is 1 TB or smaller.

5.15 – Quit Disk Utility and proceed with the installation. Install on the Hackintosh partition.

Step 6: Installing the Boot Loader

Do not fret when you
reboot after the installation and get a boot error, as you will need to
first boot the machine with iBoot (or Empire EFI). Eject the Mac OS X
Snow Leopard install DVD, put your boot CD back into the drive, and
reboot the machine. Now when you boot up, you should see a second choice
for your installation partition (Hackintosh if you named it that way).
Select the Hackintosh partition and press Enter to boot into OS X.

Once you’ve completed the first-run setup, open up Safari and download Multibeast.
Multibeast is another superb tool by tonymacx86 and MacMan that makes
it stupid easy to install the boot loader, along with all the drivers
necessary for your Hackintosh to function properly.

In addition to downloading Multibeast, you will need to download the DSDT for the Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3and copy it to the desktop. Be sure to save it as DSDT.aml.
Launch Multibeast and make the following selections (your choices will
differ if you have a different motherboard/hardware configuration):

UserDSDT

System Utilities

Advanced Options > Kexts > Audio > LegacyHDA > ALC889

Advanced Options > Kexts > Graphics > NVEnabler

Advanced Options > Kexts > Network > RealtekR1000SL

Advanced Options > Patched Kernels > 10.3.1 Supported Kernel

After
MultiBeast finishes installing, eject the iBoot CD and reboot the
system. You should be able to boot right up from the hard drive, and all
your devices should work just fine.